Discussions

The recently released Java EE 5 standard brought one big improvement in the area of object/relational persistence: the Java Persistence API (JPA) aka EJB 3.0 Persistence. SAP developers Sabine Heider, Adrian Görler, and Julia Reisbich published an article on SDN (SAP Developer Network) that provides a detailed introduction into the world of JPA.
This article does not only cover the basics of JPA, but also explains how to use JPA in EJB sessions beans and in Web applications. To this end, the reader is guided step by step through a simple, but complete end-to-end application. This application was developed and tested on SAP's Java EE 5 compliant application server:
SAP Netweaver Application Server, Java(TM) EE 5 Edition

That is a big app server, but a welcome addition to the JEE5 space - - good to see SAP playing in this market, and demonstrating why they are probably out in front of Fusion. I hold no preference in that war, yet...
I have been reading a lot about NetWeaver and the 'componentized' efforts of SAP recently, presumably the major reason why ORCL bought Siebel. I am intrigued with this quarterly or semi-annually release of new packages of functionality on top of NetWeaver, which explains its size and also explains a little bit more about what Fusion is going to be: both will be behemoths to support the wide range of functionality delivered on one platform.
They will most likely not be direct competitors to Glassfish, Geronimo, and JBoss, but they will be JEE-based, and that means inter-operability which means developer productivitiy, efficiency, and value.
As far as Persistence goes, it says a lot about the EJB3 spec., as well as the burgeoning market for clustering which we have been talking about with Terracotta's open source efforts. I think its great that SAP has entered the fray, puts pressure on ORCL to just pony up and buy BEAS, or in the very least make Fusion something useful for someone. Good luck Oracle, you have a formidable competitor on hand...
douglas dooley

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